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Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-MT, applauds after US President Barack Obama signed H.R. 6156, the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, on December 14, 2012 in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC. The legislation would punish officials tied to the November 2009 death of lawyer and anti-corruption activist Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow detention centre, denying them entry to the US and freezing their assets. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

The Russian government fired its second shot across the bow of Washington on Saturday when it published its own list of Americans unwanted on Russian soil.

“We would like to draw particular information to the fact that, unlike the American list compiled arbitrarily, our list features primarily those implicated in torture and the indefinite detention of prisoners in the Guantanamo prison camp, as well as those involved in the abduction and removal to other countries of Russian citizens and in threats to their lives and health,” a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said today.

“This war of lists was not our decision, but we do not have the right to ignore such open blackmail,” the statement continued. “It’s time for the politicians in Washington to finally realize that it is fruitless to base a relationship with Russia on an attitude of...overt dictation.”

The Russian list comprises 18 Americans not welcome on Russian soil. Four are listed as having been connected with the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, while the rest are mostly described as prosecutors and special agents accused of having violated the rights of Russians abroad, Ria Novosti newswire reported today.

This weekend's retaliation is against the so-called Magnitsky Act, signed into law by President Obama on Dec. 14, 2012. Written by the Senate, the law called upon the U.S. State Department to furnish congress with the names of Russians that have been accused of human rights abuses. The law was named after Sergei Magnitsky, a 37 year old Moscovite lawyer from Firestone Duncan who was working on behalf of Hermitage Capital Management and died of conspicuous causes while in the care of prison officials in Russia.

Under the Act, Russians deemed responsible for Magnitsky's death -- from the doctors who refused medical care, to prison guards and police officials -- and are banned from traveling to the United States or having bank accounts in the country.

For its part, the U.S. State Department under Hillary Clinton never wanted to publicize any such list of suspected human rights violators to the Congress out of concern it would irk the Russian government. The U.S. and Russia are currently in talks of jump starting their relationship in what is commonly known as the "reset". But a strong, one man lobbying effort by Hermitage founder Bill Browder convinced Maryland Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin to block the visas of corrupt foreign officials.

Cardin wrote a letter to Clinton in April 2010 asking to block entrance to the United States for 60 Russians. The list became known as Cardin's List in Moscow and soon set the sky alight over the Kremlin. The list was never published by State until the Magnitsky Act became law and Congress forced the Department's hand.

"The list his Russia's Archilles heel," Browder told me over the phone last month. "It's the one issue where the West has leverage of Russia. They can behave like cannibals in Russia, but they want to keep their money safe in the West. The Magnitsky Act puts all that at risk if they behave like cannibals at home. I can't think of a more beautiful way to honor Magnitsky than this law."

American born Browder was expelled from the country and moved to London in 2006 on allegations he was evading taxes.

Ever since, Browder has become foreign enemy No.1 in Moscow.

In March, the government opened an inquiry into this Hermitage fund, which has since divested hundreds of millions out of Russia, and is trying to argue a case that Browder was part of a group of foreign investors who caused the 1998 crash of the Russian economy.

Immediately after the Act was signed into law, Vladimir Putin and the Parliament devised a law that banned Americans from adopting Russian children on account of a handful of Russian children having problems with their adoptive American parents and returning home. One 3-year-old Russian adoptee named Max died in Texas while in the care of his American family.

On Friday, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian State Duma’s international affairs committee, said the Magnitsky Act “buries the idea and the concept” of the “reset” policy undertaken by Obama and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2009.

He said the law “will be present, possibly, for a very long time in our relations and will poison them.”